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Gravy for Roast or Baked Meat

A simple gravy made from drippings, water, salt, and optional flour, boiled briefly and poured around roast or baked meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 28% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,529 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Gravy for Roast or Baked Meat

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pour off nearly all the fat from the drippings, being careful not to disturb the sediment.

  2. Add ½ cup boiling water and ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt to the drippings.

  3. If desired, stir in 2 teaspoons flour to thicken.

  4. Place the pan on the edge of the fire and boil for 3 minutes, stirring well.

  5. Pour the gravy around the meat, not over it.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Meat + flourtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,529 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Drippings from cooked meat
Provide the concentrated meat flavour and the base of the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as it boils, giving the gravy body.

The step that matters

Boiling while stirring after adding the flour. Flour starch only thickens fully when heated, and stirring keeps it dispersed so lumps do not form. Stopping early or letting it sit can leave the gravy thin or grainy.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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